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| One of the leaders of the October 1917 Revolution along with Lenin. Together, they envisioned an immediate transition to socialist and proletarian form of government and did not believe Marx's "bourgeois" phase was necessary. |
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| Close colleague of Lenin and member of Russian Social Democrat Labour Party (RSDLP). However, he began to differ with Lenin and party membership, leading his faction to split into the "Mensheviks." |
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| Most prominent leader of the Kadets. He denounces the Fundamental Law of 1906. The kadets achieved a large majority in the elections to the First Duma. |
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| Takes over Witte's position as chairman of the Council of Ministers after he resigns. His main program was his land program, known as "the wager on the sober and the strong." |
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| Religious philosopher who contributed to the book of essays entitled "Landmarks" or Vekhi, which challenges the preoccupation with "revolution" and advocates a more gradual change. |
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| Religious philosopher who contributed to Vekhi. |
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| Former Social Democrat who contributed to Vekhi. |
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| American historian who was the first to take the Soviet Historian's argument (that the country was already on the eve of Revolution before the war) seriously. |
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| Austrian Grand-Duke whose assassination by Serbian terrorists prompts WWI. |
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| Established as Prime Minister of the Provisional Government. |
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| Played a leading role in the establishment of War Industry Committees to oversee the conversion of factories for military purposes. |
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| Had a successful offensive (Brusilov Offensive) in the Carpathians but it was a huge failure in the long-run with tremendous loss of life. |
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| Replaces Lvov as Prime Minister. |
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| Commander-in-chief of provisional government, tried to declare marshall law and install a military government. Was then arrested and charged with treason by Kerensky. |
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| Leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, urged restraint when workers marched into Petrograd in July, 1917 and demonstrators told him to "take power when its offered you, son of a bitch!" |
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| A Siberian peasant who had gained a reputation as a holy man, advisor to Nicholas II. |
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| Went from cities to the countryside hoping to trade what they had for grain. Example of how prominent the black market became because of war communism. |
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| Admiral Alexander Kolchak |
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| White officer in the Baltic |
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| White officer in the Caucasus and among the Cossacks |
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| National poet of the Poles, from Lithuania |
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| Secretary of the Communist International. Believed the Whites were trying to subject Russia to foreign colonization and that the Reds were leading a "national struggle of liberation." One of Lenin's closest comrades sentenced to imprisonment in Stalin's stage trials when he confessed to setting up terrorist groups and conspiring to wreck and sabotage Soviet industrial projects. |
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| Long time leader of the Communist International. Put on trial in 1936 and was executed. |
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| Argued that Bolsheviks could "creep into socialism on peasant's backs," i.e. preside over a predominantly agricultural economy in which the peasants essentially ran rural Russia through their village assemblies. Tried and executed in Stalin's purge trials. |
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| Anarchist who leads Ukranian independence army during the Russian Civil War. |
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| One of Russia's war poets |
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| Prime Minister before Stolypin. Resigns and then serves again from 1916 to 1917. Committed to the tsar. |
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| Russian realist painter, he was later celebrated as a "model progressive" in the USSR by the "Socialist Realist" painters |
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| Historian, attribute Russia's military failure in WWI to their failure to accurately decide whether the Austrian or German front was more important. |
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| Wife of Nicholas II. She was extremely disliked by the Russian people. When Nicholas went to the front of the war in 1915, she was left in charge. |
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| One of Lenin's senior aids, chairman of Moscow Soviet. One of the founding members of the Politburo. Tried and executed in Stalin's purge trials. |
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| Vladimir Soloviev, Andrei Belyi |
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| Symbolists, who believed that art was meant to reconcile heaven and earth. |
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| Symbolist poet, portrays the Red Guards of Petrograd as apostles in his poem The Twelve. |
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| Futurist poet who believed that revolution would be a cleansing force. |
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| Director of the Central Institute for Labor. Talked about men of the future as if they were machines, with "nerves of steel" and "muscles like iron rails." His institute pioneered the "scientific study of labor" in which industrial processes were broken down to their minutest components and human beings slotted into them so that, by easily learned gestures and movements, they could generate a high level of productivity. |
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| Theorist of the Proletarian Cultural-Educational Associations ("prolekults"). "Organizational Science," or "techtology," which combines art, science, and all fields of learning. |
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| inheritor of Lenin's official position. Condemned by Central Committee as a "Rightist Deviationist" and expelled from Politburo. Later tried and executed in Stalin's purge trials. |
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| Head of trade union, also condemned as a "Rightist Deviationist" and expelled. |
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| Becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. Perceived by Lenin as too crude to lead. Stalin is able to achieve power by establishing himself as a "centrist" and supporter of the NEP. |
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| Lenin's wife. Comissar of Education. |
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| district party secretary in Moscow who circulated an appeal that denounced Stalin, collectivization, and deindustrialization. Suggested Stalin and his associates could be removed only by force. Expelled from the party and arrested as a result. Stalin wanted him executed but other members resisted and he was given a ten-year prison sentence. |
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| Head of the Party in Leningrad. He was a focal point of opposition to the more extreme policies of Stalin. On December 1, 1934 he was murdered by Leonid Nikolaev, a young party member. The murder was probably backed by Stalin. This event was the trigger for the unleashing of mass arrests and executions. Stalin charged everyone involved with somehow being complicit in Kirov's murder. |
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| Kirov's assassin. He was a young party member. |
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| Most prominent victim of Stalin's purge of army's officer corps. |
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| One of Lenin's closest comrades, tried with Radek for setting up terrorist groups and conspiring to wreck and sabotage Soviet industrial projects. Sentenced to death. |
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| Leader of the NKVD, his reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovshchina." He was later executed himself, illustrating that no one was truly immune to this terror. |
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| Director of the NKVD from 1934 to 1936, supervised arrest and execution of Old Bolsheviks Kamenev and Zinoviev. Ultimately a victim of the purgest himself. |
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| Russian poet and author of Doctor Zhivago. Tried to become part of the Communist literary world and write in ways dictated by the party but was unable to after seeing poverty and degradation in the Urals. His works were rejected by Writers' Union journals. In the end he stopped writing poetry and stuck to translations. |
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| Drove the Japanese out of the disputed area of Manchuria in August 1939. This was a decisive victory, which caused the Japanese to pursue their strategic aims elsewhere. Put in charge of the defense of Moscow. Hero of WWII. |
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| pro-Western foreign commissar. Under him, Soviet diplomacy used its best efforts to promote cooperation with democratic parties in western Europe. Applauded the coming to power of Popular Front governments and promoted good relations with them. According to him, the main cause of the Cold War was that after what it had gone through with Germany, it was natural that the Soviet leaders should crave absolute security, and should go through any lengths to achieve it, no matter what this meant for other peoples. |
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| Litvinov's successor as foreign commissar. Signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in August, 1939 known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Tries to organize a coup against Krushchev in 1957. Krushchev got rid of him by making him ambassador to Mongolia. |
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| One of the heroes of the defense of Moscow, captured by the Germans and persuaded to head the movement to entice Soviet prisoners of war into the Wehrmacht. |
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| Leader of Yugoslavia, an east European socialist state which did not become part of the Soviet bloc. He believed he did not ow his victory to the Red Army and did not wish to subordinate himself to Stalin. He was actually a more radical Communist. |
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| Soviet delegate to the UN, proposed all existing nuclear weapons be destroyed and their future manufacture banned. |
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| Russian spy in the US nuclear project |
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| Scientific director of the nuclear project. The Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949 in Kazakhstan. |
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| Nuclear physicist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He was the leader of the Dissident movement, and urged that freedom of information and creative work is necessary for the intelligentsia. He believes the state suppresses this. |
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| US diplomat who first formulated the strategy of "containment." |
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| President during the Cuban Missile Crisis, where nuclear war was just barely avoided. He insisted Krushchev remove the missiles he had placed in Cuba. This was a humiliating climbdown for Russia. |
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| Head of secret services, seems a likely candidate to become Stalin's successor and follow in his tyrannical footsteps. He is arrested and executed under of the accusation of being a "British spy." This marks the end of terror against its own. |
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| Stalin's official successor within the party, helped Molotov organize coup against Krushchev. |
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| Emerged as Stalin's successor. He denounced Stalin's personality cult and purges of "worthy" leaders. He does not question the political monopoly of Communism and the basic policies of collectivization and industrialization. |
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| New prime minister of Hungary who leads the uprising of 1956, denouncing the Warsaw Pact and declaring Hungary's neutrality. |
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| The Soviet leaders see the Hungary Uprising as a "counterrevolution" and crush it, installing Kadar as head of the more compliant government. |
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| First human to fly into space |
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| Krushchev's wife. He came to the US wife her, which represents an important departure from earlier patterns where the family lives of Soviet leaders were kept separate from their political duties. |
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| Author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which describes a day in the life of an ordinary prisoner at a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s. Also a leader in the Dissident movement. |
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| Became general secretary of the CPSU, lead the team of collective leadership. His rule is referred to as the "Era of Stagnation." It was much more conservative and placed rigid ideological controls on the arts and literature. They wanted to bring the open criticism and historical analysis of the Stalin era to an end. |
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| One of the leaders who overthrew Krushchev, favored gradual economic reform. Change had to come through "collective leadership." |
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| Soviet writer placed on trial in the mid-60s for publishing his works abroad under a pseudonym and "spreading anti-communist propaganda." Sentenced to hard labor in a concentration camp. |
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| Tried along with Sinyavsky for publishing works abroad under a pseudonym and "spreading anti-communist propaganda." Sentenced to hard labor in a concentration camp. |
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| Russian-American poet who is expelled from the Soviet union in 1972. |
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| Elected new first secretary in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. He aspired for "socialism with a human face," and introduced an ambitious program of political and cultural liberalization, with a much freer press and assembly. The Soviet Union intervenes in Prague Spring. |
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| Early and important leader of the dissident movement |
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| Leader of demonstration in Moscow by dissidents who were against the Czech invasion. |
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| Early and important leader of the dissident movement |
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| Editor of the journal Novyi mir (New World), which published Alexsandr Solzhenistyn's Day in the Life. |
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| Immediate successor after Brezhnev's death in 1982. He had been head of the KGB and wanted to investigate corruption and tighten labor discipline. He died before he could accomplish this. |
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| Elected as head of government after Andropov's death. Just an interim figure, and he is ill for his entire term. His death brings the Brezhnev era to an end. |
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| Appointed as head of government and party, he realized that the Soviet needed extensive reforms to seriously compete as a power. His rule was marked by his policies of "glasnost" and "perestroika." |
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| Emerges as a critic of Gorbachev and later the party itself. Became elected president of Russia in June 1991 in the first election ever held to choose a Russian leader. |
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| Wins presidential elections of March 2000. |
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